Intel Readies 13W CPUs, Dives Deeper in Low-Power Territory

Not so long ago, mobile processors from Intel had thermal design points (TDP) of 45W. TDP designates the energy that the chip and its cooling system are designed to dissipate. It is not really a measure of power draw, but both are correlated because dissipating more heat, means that more energy is consumed to produce that heat.According to slides published by VR-Zone China, Intel is about to launch 13W Core i3/i5/i7 processors (CPUs) based on the Ivy-Bridge micro-architecture. Their base frequency is 1.5GHz, but in “turbo” mode, they can ramp up to 2.6GHz depending on thermal conditions.All of them are dual-core, but they can run four thread, making them appear as a quad-core processor for software applications. They all come with an internal graphics processor, which is the classic Intel HD4000 GPU which equips all recent CPUs of this family. On low-power mode, these chips can even go down to 7W.

In 2013, Intel will launch its next-generation micro-architecture called Haswell, which will reach a 10W TDP. The net result should be noticeable gains in battery life, and cooler devices, including tablets. If you look at it, Intel has been making a steady progress in terms of power consumption. Now the question is how fast and how low can they go to address the mobile market: